Charlotte employers push back their return to offices amid resurgent pandemic

The office towers of uptown Charlotte stand mostly empty. Until at least 2021, that’s not likely to change.

The coronavirus has pushed thousands of office workers into their spare rooms, kitchens and, if they’re lucky, home offices. At first, businesses scrambled madly to adapt to this reality with work-from-home setups, teleconferencing licenses and new cleaning regimens.

But now, with the COVID-19 pandemic expected to stretch well into next year, it’s beginning to make some companies reassess how long they might be working remotely — and whether they should change the way they do business.

As of Nov. 17, Mecklenburg County had reported 38,733 COVID-19 cases. More than 420 residents have died due to the disease since March, according to the county health department. Cases in the Charlotte area that had been relatively stable for much of early fall began to steadily rise in October and November.

That’s led some of Charlotte’s top employers to push back discussions on returning to the office.

Red Ventures gave all of its employees the option to work from home until the end of 2021. LendingTree isn’t going to restart talks on returning to its offices until next year. Brighthouse Financial will have its offices closed until at least next May. And Wells Fargo will likely keep its 200,000 remote employees out of the office until at least January.

Still, some workers are coming back to the office in small numbers. Duke Energy and Barings have a handful of employees working in their offices. Bank of America has invited some workers back to its offices in New York and London, but not yet in Charlotte. Those examples, though, are exceptions to the norm.

What’s yet to happen is companies breaking their leases en masse due to the pandemic and moving out. Many firms are eager to get back into their offices, once it’s safe to do so.

Mike Sullivan, a commercial real estate broker with The Nichols Company, doesn’t believe that employers will abandon their office spaces as some have predicted. But he’s worked with clients who are interested in offices farther out of uptown that may be more convenient for employees — with parking right beside the building, for example, instead of in a deck.

“They wanted to get something where, when you walk outside, you’re not in a hallway,” Sullivan said. “I think they’re looking for maybe more controlled environments.”

Bank of America

Most Bank of America workers in both Charlotte and the rest of the world are working from home, as they have been since March. The Charlotte-based bank employs 16,000 in the city.

In a practice that a handful of employers are experimenting with, some workers who were working remote have been allowed to return to the office.

So far that’s happened in New York and London, home of the firm’s investment bankers and traders, but not in Charlotte, according to bank spokesman Mark Pipitone. Those employees have the option to continue working from home if they don’t feel comfortable going back.

“We are a work-from-office company,” CEO Brian Moynihan said at a bank conference earlier this month. “We will get back to that.”

Moynihan said at the conference that he will provide support for Bank of America employees to get vaccinated for the virus. “Our plan will be to get access to the vaccine as fast as possible for employees, but consistent with what society has in terms of priorities,” he said.

Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo, which employs 27,000 in Charlotte, will keep its current work-from-home plan through at least February 1, according to spokesman Josh Dunn. Wells Fargo has about 200,000 employees now working from home, out of a workforce of roughly 270,000.

Among its network of branches, just under a fifth are closed, CEO Charlie Scharf said on an October earnings call. Some branches have reopened to foot traffic recently after having done transactions only through drive-thrus, Scharf said.

The bank doesn’t know when it will return to its pre-pandemic operating model, Dunn said.

Duke Energy

About 500 Duke Energy employees in the Charlotte area have returned to the office as the company gradually brings its workers back. Two hundred to 500 more employees are expected to return to the office by the end of the year, according to Neil Nissan, a spokesman for the utility. The firm employs 6,000 in Charlotte.

“Over the last few months, we’ve demonstrated that we can have people safely occupy their work location, and we’ve applied these practices as we bring employees back,” Nissan said.

Inside Duke offices, Nissan said, the company has put in place safety practices including signage, social distancing and disinfectants. While face coverings are required in common areas, they are not when workers are at their desks and distanced from others.

Truist

Just over half of Truist’s roughly 58,000 workers are remote, and that’s expected to be the case until at least March, said bank spokesman Kyle Tarrance. The bank’s network of about 2,900 branches from Florida to New Jersey is open.

The bank, however, is trimming how much office space it has. A product of the 2019 merger of the banks BB&T and SunTrust, Truist bought the former Hearst Tower in uptown Charlotte for $455.5 million last year, but also has a stable of offices across the South as a result of prior mergers. Tarrance said the consolidation of offices will save money and allow the company to transition to more modern workspaces.

LendingTree

LendingTree, the Charlotte-based online loan marketplace, is entirely work-from-home and will continue to be remote until at least 2021. Discussions about returning to the office are on hold at the company until next year, spokeswoman Megan Grueling said.

Earlier this year, LendingTree said it would move out of its offices in Ballantyne as the company’s lease there expired. The firm’s new headquarters in South End is expected to be completed in March.

“The goal is for the building to be ready and fully operational when the decision is made to bring employees into the office (based on case numbers and the state of the pandemic),” Grueling said in a statement.

Ally

Ally, the Detroit-based bank with a major presence in Charlotte, expects most of its employees to work from home until at least the end of the first quarter of 2021. The bank, which specializes in automobile financing, is still scheduled to open the Ally Charlotte Center, a 26-story tower on Stonewall Street in uptown in the spring, said spokeswoman Jillian Palash.

“The long-term health of our culture benefits from direct human engagement and interaction,” Palash said in a statement.

Other employers

• Employees at Lowe’s Mooresville headquarters will keep working from home until at least February, spokeswoman Maureen Wallace said. The hardware store chain is building a 2,000-employee global technology hub in South End that is expected to open in 2021.
• Red Ventures, the media and marketing firm based in Indian Land, S.C., is offering all employees the option to work from home through the end of 2021, according to Hallie Cornetta, its executive vice president of people operations. The company’s offices, now closed, will be opened “methodically” once it is safe. Only a handful of pre-cleared employees are now being allowed in its offices.
• At Barings, the Charlotte-based asset manager, the firm has put in place a voluntary return-to-office process that more than 10% of its Charlotte employees are using, according to spokeswoman Cheryl Krauss. The firm, which manages about $350 billion of mostly debt, employs more than 1,900, with most of its management team based in Charlotte.
• Mecklenburg County employees now working remotely will likely re-occupy facilities in phases, said county spokeswoman Tammy Thompson. Public health nurses, social workers and environmental health workers are still working in person, Thompson said.

This story was originally published November 22, 2020 at 6:00 AM.